"You take no damage and suffer Poison" - Wat?

[MerlinCross]

So this is a weird thing that just happened in my game.

The group opened up a bag. Plot wise it had "Pocketful of Vipers" which spawns some poison vipers. Which are damage wise 1d4-1. But they have a poison effect if they hit.

So due to the sudden appearance, I ruled they got a surprised round and attacked. Well I got the following result on damage...

1d4-1 = (1)-1 for 0 damage.

Part of me clicked and said "Wait if I didn't actually do damage... do I still poison?"

Do you apply poison if the attack doesn't do damage due to either dice or maybe DR?

[YogoZuno]

The viper won't actually ever do 0 damage - if, after modifiers, the damage is zero or less, it becomes a single point of non-lethal damage.

[cuatroespada]

if that point of nonlethal is negated by DR, though, no i do not believe you would apply the poison.

[willuwontu]

Whenever damage reduction completely negates the damage from an attack, it also negates most special effects that accompany the attack, such as injury poison, a monk's stunning, and injury-based disease.

[willuwontu]

Minimum Damage: If penalties reduce the damage result to less than 1, a hit still deals 1 point of nonlethal damage.

[Azothath]

non-lethal is enough to deliver the poison.

Personally in a home game I would have coated the bag in contact poison and just put a rubber snake in the bag...

[Claxon]

Would be better with a dozen rubber snakes and 1 real.

[Kitty Catoblepas]

Claxon wrote:

Would be better with a dozen rubber snakes and 1 real.

...And the real snake is a non-venomous colubrid while the others are venomous rubber snake golems.

[Claxon]

Kitty Catoblepas wrote:

Claxon wrote:

Would be better with a dozen rubber snakes and 1 real.

...And the real snake is a non-venomous colubrid while the others are venomous rubber snake golems.

I love it.

[Azothath]

iron cobras... or mithral cobras... just the cost of the trap has gone wayyyy up

does this mean that high fiber bran muffins are classified in the game as slow acting afflictions or poisons? '''⌐(ಠ۾ಠ)¬'''

[MerlinCross]

Huh I got way more posts than I thought I would or maybe needed.

But thanks for your time. It was less actual trap/threat and more plot thing anyway(He spent time to cast this trap on the bag, what did he want to guard?)